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iLife \'06 improved, but not a bargain

updated 12:30 pm EST, Mon February 13, 2006

by MacNN Staff

iLife \'06 not a bargain

Apple's newly introduced suite of digital lifestyle applications--iLife '06--has many improvements, but may not be worth the (upgrade) price. A new column in The Washington Post notes the differences between iLife '06 and its predecessor, iLife '05. Both versions offer major upgrades to iPhoto, while making relatively few changes to iDVD, iMovie, and GarageBand. While iLife '06 features a new addition--iWeb--to the suite of applications, the upgrade only makes sense in a handful of circumstances, according to the columnist. "The most likely reason to upgrade would be if your old copy of iPhoto has begun sinking under the weight of your accumulated pictures." Apple claims iPhoto 6 can store 10 times the number of photos as the previous version, or up to 250,000. The colmnist says that Apple's "bonehead" implementation of RSS (Really Simple Syndication), GarageBand's new podcast studio, iMovie HD stability issues, and iDVD's enhanced support suggest that most users can supplement iLife '05 with shareware programs, or wait for the release of iLife '07. The software is free with new Macs and is $80 for a single-user license. Apple, however, does not offer any upgrade path for users of previous versions.

IMO, iWeb is worth nearly the $80 all by itself. But overall, I'm finding iLife '06 to be pretty disappointing.

The most annoying thing about iLife '06, to me, is that iMovie 6 is a complete pigdog. Much slower, and that's when it's not crashing. A patch is needed desperately. For iLife users who particularly use iMovie a lot, this upgrade is a baaaad move. Spend eighty bucks, and watch your productivity plummet? I don't think so.

I would contend that the reviewer didn't look too closely at the apps included. The price is worthwhile for the new abilities in GarageBand alone. It will allow you to create podcasts and feeds with just a few clicks. For anyone that's done podcast creation "by hand," the GarageBand 3 method rocks!

iLife '06 upgrade, for me, is definitely worth every dime. All the appication upgrades are superb. iWeb is an incredible easy and robust application in lieu of working through .Mac to publish online. I am a heavy user of all the apps in iLife and have found them to have awesome surprises due to the recent upgrades. Crashes? I haven't had any problems and I have been using all the applications daily, including iMovie. I just finished a 3 hour documentary for a client using iMovie and built a custom DVD template in DVD Pro. Completely seamless and never had iMovie crash. Garageband is amazing; especially the new podcast features.
I would recommend forking out the cash. $80 is a small price to pay for the quality of software and deliverables one can produce.

Did you read my comment above. The $80 is an upgrade price. Everybody who has a Mac that can run it, already has a version of iLife, so there's no reason for a full retail price, which is worth far more than $80.

I dunno about iWeb or the rest but the fact that iDVD now supports making proper widescreen DVDs is a lot more than a small change, given ho wmany camcorders can now do actcual or real WS (let alone importing other conent). I dunno if it's worth the upgrade on it's, but add in faster iphoto and iWeb and it seems a reasonable upgrade to me. The only app that' doesn't have significant new functionality appears to be iMovie..

I was at the Apple Store just yesterday and looked at the iLife upgrade, but decided not to spend the $79. I just don't use the apps enough or care enough about the new features to spend the money this year.

Sure, GarageBand's improvements are worth the price alone. If, that is, you use it. But since I have the same musical ear as a dead person, its useless to me.

But if you just want one part of the package, say iPhoto or iWeb, then that $80 seems steep. Esp. if you paid $80 last year for what you thought was the version of the software that solved your problems.

And, actually, if you think about it, iLife is a lot like Quicken. Every year there's a new version, which, you hope, will fix the problems you had in the last version (because they never seem to get fixed in the previous version) and not cause too many new problems. And it usually doesn't work out that way.

People complain about OS X being a 'subscription' purchase, but iLife is worse.

For me, the whole package is worth every penny. As said, full screen editing in iPhoto is fantastic andGarageband really is improved. Where do you get such a great collection of application for this amount of money? Also, by buying iLife, I like to show Apple that I appreciate what they are doing with the software. iWeb (which comes extra, but you don't pay extra!) made me able to release my own video podcasts (search for svencentral) and I never could have thought that I would have my own video podcast in the iTMS. And so easy! iLife rocks!

They've got to be kidding me! What a bunch of clowns. GarageBand not a big upgrade? GarageBand is one of the biggest updates. iWeb is huge by itself (provided you look past some of the inflexibilities), iPhoto is a very respectable upgrade, and iMovie is a decent update.

WashingtonPost hasn't even used iLife '06. They've just read about it or something.

I haven't even read their article...the summary was enough and I won't give them the hit they want.

I am relatively impressed with iWeb, It writes fairly clean code and is easy-ish to use. I have a few complaints (one of which is that I'll probably have to wait until another iteration until these issues are addressed). The biggest negative with iWeb is that you can't use two macs to manage the sites iWeb builds. Well, you can, but you have to hand code the index.html file to provide a fork to the different pages.
I think I'm beginning to understand the Woz's complaints about software being less than inspiring lately. I'm sure there is pressure to get the stuff out there so there's significant enough reasons to justify the yearly fee; whatever, I guess we're all beta testers to some extent.
B.

If I'm correct, when iLife 04 came out, it was priced 49$. iLife 05's price rose to 79$. Still, considering what you get, it's rather inexpensive and there is no obligation to buy it anyway.

I bought the 04 version, then thought I would not have too much use for the 05 version - I only use iPhoto (and GarageBand occasionally). I will buy the 06 edition because the concept of iWeb - blogging - webcasting look very intersting to me. I probably won't buy the 07 version unless it comes with significant improvements. Then again, maybe the 08 version will be worth investing in it.

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